2014/05/02

A quote

.

Its true.

You could have peace by surrendering immediately. Whoever fights a war does it for something different than "peace". The idea that one could fight a war to end war looks British in origin to me; I've seen next to nothing alike in German sources, for example.

4 comments:

Don't read too much into the idea of a "War to End All Wars." It was an attempt to justify the costs of the First World War during the war and as a post-hoc justification as well. It is merely a poorly thought out rhetorical device.

Yes, because the level of public discourse in the West is so low that one could be forgiven for confusing it with the incoherent mewling noises produced by people with particular mental handicaps.

It would be wrong to say that this is a guiding force here; the dynamic in the Anglo-American countries is geared towards perpetual conflict. Everything is a war, particularly in the US with their infinite list of wars; Terror, Drugs, Poverty, Crime, etc. Willingness to rush into conflict relies on ignorance, which we have in spades, and a mindset geared towards seeing everything in terms of imposing will on another being the default recourse, rather than compromise or cooperation - even the word order I used indicates this, it was the first thing that came to mind while writing: compromise implies that force failed and neither party is satisfied, while cooperating parties are generally perceived to fulfill their objectives more satisfactorily. Even though the literal definitions are different.

Perhaps they mean to sacrifice peace in the short term for peace in the long run (an inversion of neville chamberlains policy towards the nazis)? To be sure, most people don't think THAT far ahead, and politicians generally use the 'fighting for peace' bit as rhetoric to justify wars of choice. But still...